Fic: Capture the Flag 6/?
Title: Capture the Flag
Author: triquetralmoon
Rating: R
Genre: H/C (respiratory illness, PTSD)
Warnings: Swearing, violence, eventual flashbacks of graphic torture
Spoilers: Season 4, this is set in between Criss Angel Is a Douchebag and Death Takes a Holiday.
Summary: A soldier in the war to stop the apocalypse, Dean is running himself into the ground as he runs away from his time in Hell. What he pegs as a simple sickness soon becomes something much more deadly. The Winchesters can never catch a break. For some soldiers, the war is never over.
Chapter 1 / Chapter 2 / Chapter 3 / Chapter 4 / Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Cookie Crisp
It was an oldie, but a goodie. Alastair had somehow known, had always known, how to get inside someone's head to mix half-truths and personal history with torture. It was what made him so goddamn good at his job.
There had been a job in New Mexico, a solo-gig and Dean had made the critical mistake of not packing extra water for the Impala's radiator. The car overheated and Dean was stranded with a tiny pueblo hut for shelter - the one time he'd ever had to utilize the knowledge of converting piss to drinking water. He had a pretty undeniable case of heat stroke by the time someone had come along. Alastair took it - the orange haze, the smell of clay and the expectation of tumbleweeds, and had shoved him in an adobe oven. Trapped him, baked him like cookies.
He was back there now, and although he had memories of his knuckles banging on splintered pine, the rushing suffocation of grave dirt, his hands were still meeting with unyielding stone, his fingernails breaking off as they snagged uselessly on the rock. Eyes closed tightly shut, he remembered the pain of his eyeballs being exposed to the heat, of tear ducts drying out in moments, the horrible realization that any humidity you felt was from your own body's moisture - becoming like those goddamn awful banana chips his dad had always insisted on packing.
A sharp knock sounded, out of place for his current predicament. Adobe absorbed sound; this was a hollow rapping on thick metal. He was granted the mysterious knowledge that comes to you in a dream: it was a door, the dehydrated corpse of a man in fatigues on the other side.
The image woke Dean with a start, but it took him a moment before he allowed his eyelids to peel apart.
Not on fire - check.
The knocking continued, bringing him further out of the nightmare. His head spun dizzily as he sat up much too quickly. Sam wasn't there, his bed made already.
"Sam, you forget your key?" Dean's voice sounded like a violin being bowed with a saw blade, and he doubted that his brother had heard him.
The knock became more insistent and Dean groaned. "Keep it together, dude, you need to chill!" His exclamation was punctuated by the tortuous sneaker-in-a-washing-machine cough which had ended up waking him up a good portion of the night, keeping Sam up as well. He forced himself into a standing position, his stomach giving a belch of protest to remind him that his entire body was ready to rebel against whatever it was he wanted to do. Considering how he felt currently, it wasn't like he needed the reminder.
He was nearly at the door when Dean heard a voice, a voice which did not belong to his brother, informing Dean that he had about thirty seconds to open the door or it was going to be broken down. Dean got to the door and opened it just in time for Bobby to be using his shoulder as a battering ram, nearly getting Dean a good crack to the jaw. Instead, Bobby just ran into the room, not being able to stop his momentum until he was several feet inside. When the older man halted to a short stop and turned around, he gave a snort of derision.
"Damnit, Dean, you look like crap."
"Yeah, well, nice to see you too, sunshine."
"Where's Sam?"
Dean poked his head out into the chill autumn morning. It appeared the Indian Summer they had going for them had finally ceased altogether. "Car's not here. Gimme a sec." Dean went to go grab his cell off of the nightstand to call Sam, but there was a note that his phone was weighing down.
'Gone to get breakfast from the diner. Be right back. Call if you need anything. Leave this room and I will kick your ass.'
"He's at the diner, Bobby. It isn't far." Dean hugged an arm across his chest, bracing his ribs against the spikes of pain that arose on every inhale.
Bobby simply nodded, watching Dean carefully. "You want to tell me what's going on with you, son?"
Dean rolled his eyes, "C'mon, I'm just run down."
"Yeah, that's why you sound worse than some of my junkpiles. Go sit down."
Dean just stood there for a moment. "Junkpile…what?" It sounded familiar, déjà vu pulling at him until he remembered; Sam had said the same thing to him yesterday. "Huh, you two girls are spending entirely too much time together. No more slumber parties."
Not following the line of thought, Bobby quirked an eyebrow at Dean. "Just sit your ass down."
He shrugged and did as he was told, not because he felt some keen urge to obey, but he couldn't really think of a good reason to stay standing, his knees getting that slightly Gumby-feel right before they usually would buckle.
"Not that I don't appreciate the thought, you coming all this way, but…" Dean paused to catch his breath, ignoring the hairy eyeball his father figure was giving him. "Unless you're going to beat the germs out of me, I don't see what you're gonna be able to do."
"I got stuff in the car. Figured Sam'd help me haul it in."
"I could -"
"You can keep your backside on that bed, is what you can do." Bobby snapped sharply. Bobby only gave attitude, real attitude, when he thought Dean was messing up big time, making life-destroying mistakes. Dean remembered the conversation Sam had about Dean not caring enough to stick around. He also remembered the empty bottles strewn around Bobby's house when he first got out of Hell.
"…you know- " Dean was going to say something to Bobby about how he really did want to be on the planet, about how Bobby and Sam shouldn't worry so much, about how he wasn't quite so screwed in the head that he wanted to get personal with death yet another time, but then Sam walked back in, breakfast in hand.
Saved by Sasquatch.
Sam looked back and forth between his sickly brother and Bobby, sensing the awkward moment in the room. "Hey, Bobby, thanks for coming. You two playing nice?"
"We're just peachy." Dean said, a wide grin crossing his face. He was quite relieved to be bailed out of a moment that had the potential to become touchy-feely.
"Yeah…" Bobby said. "I was just telling our mutual idjit here that I had some stuff in the car."
"And I said -" Dean chimed in, but Sam immediately cut him off.
"Lemme guess! You told him that you'd help him bring it in, and he - having common sense - would have told you no. And the wheel turns on your cycle of denial and self-abuse…" Sam chuckled a little maniacally and turned to Bobby. "You see what I have to put up with?"
It didn't take Sherlock Holmes to figure out that while Sam was joking on the surface, he was rapidly getting to the point where he wasn't going to be able to reign in his frustration any longer.
"So, why don't we go get the stuff?" Bobby offered a retreat, gesturing toward the door.
Sam pulled out his cell and glanced at the clock. "Sure, yeah, we have time."
Both Bobby and Dean gazed at Sam in confusion.
"Time?" Bobby asked.
"We got a job?" Dean's face lit up with hope, at which Sam promptly rolled his eyes.
"No, not a job. You have a doctor's appointment."
Dean's jaw dropped. "You're serious?"
Before Dean could even put up a proper protest Sam immediately went into his short, well-rehearsed speech. "Don't even argue, man. You promised me last night you'd go, and you saying that was the only reason I didn't drag your ass to the ER last night. You can't take it back now. You're going."
Dean stared at Sam with a stony expression. "Where?"
"Local clinic." Sam turned his back on Dean's expression, concentrating intently on putting breakfast on the small dinette table. "You should eat something."
Dean ignored him. "When?"
"An hour. They are about twenty minutes away, though."
"So much for local." Dean grumbled. Twenty minutes wasn't far, but damnit - he wanted to grumble about something.
"It handles three towns, so…relatively." Sam replied, taking a slow sip of his coffee.
Dean turned and walked away from the two men, heading toward the bathroom. Sam noticed for the first time that Dean was holding himself the way he does when fuglies have beaten the crap out of his back, his shoulders slouched forward, the hand that wasn't bracing his ribs reaching back to touch the curve of his back every now and again.
"Where are you going? I don't think the bathroom windows are large enough to escape through." Sam tried to joke.
"I'm gonna go take a shower, or do I need an appointment for that too?" Dean didn't even turn around as he scooped up a handful of clean clothes - not that Sam and Bobby needed to see his face to get a feel for the annoyance etched on it.
"Good idea." Bobby grinned wryly. "Ya wouldn't want the doc to think that the stink is a symptom."
Dean snorted and shut the bathroom door behind him.
Sam and Bobby headed out to the motel parking lot where the older hunter's truck was waiting. In the back there were two very large red toolboxes and a couple of thick medical texts.
"All this?" Sam asked.
"Yep." Bobby grunted, hefting one of the toolboxes over the side of the flatbed and putting it in Sam's waiting hands. "Though, I'm not sure how much good it'll do him."
"What? Why not?" Sam's brow immediately furrowed.
"That cough of his is deeper than just some chest cold. We really need to know what we're dealing with -and only an x-ray, labs, and trained ears can do that, or else I'm just tossing pills in the dark here. Plus, you said he's been hiding it - so whatever is going on with him has probably sunk its teeth in pretty good."
Sam flinched inwardly. He knew Bobby wasn't implying anything, but the thought still came that if he had been more on top of the situation, things might not have gotten this bad.
Bobby saw the downtrodden look of self-loathing Sam's entire posture was suddenly screaming.
"Ain't the first time he's done this, Sam. Won't be the last."
"We're still going to do everything we can." Sam declared firmly.
"'Course we are. That's not even a question."
Sam did not like the sound of this conversation at all. It reminded him of the many conversations that occurred before Dean went to Hell: that everything was going to be fine, that they were going to do everything in their power to stop it… And, granted, having demonic dogs on your ass is a tad more ominous than getting sick, but Sam felt entitled to worry. The memory of gently placing his brother's cold body in a hand-built coffin was still fresh in his mind.
Bobby hefted the other toolbox over the side and the two men headed back into the motel room. They immediately stopped short, hearing Dean's rib-breaking hack bouncing off of the walls, the tile in the bathroom only serving to make it echo louder. Bobby busied himself looking through the many small compartments of the toolboxes while Sam perched on the end of Dean's bed, both of them waiting for the painful choking to stop. Minutes later, it finally happened. There was a break in the ragged coughs and barely audible behind the closed door was wheezing lacing every irregular breath.
"Dude, you alright?" Sam called.
There was no response.
Sam threw Bobby a look and stood up, heading over to the bathroom door.
"If you don't answer, I'm gonna come in."
Again, the only response was the staggered wheezing.
"Alright, man, if you're naked - cover up." Sam gave a warning knock on the door as he slowly pushed it open. He found his brother sitting on the floor, mostly dressed after having showered - his new clothes damp from the mix of feverish sweat and shower steam. A wad of toilet paper made disgusting by bloody phlegm was clutched tightly in his hand. His back was leaning against the tub, his purplish lips standing out against his pallid complexion. Dean gazed up at the gigantic form looming over him blearily, the crooked smile sending a message, 'What do ya want a freakin' medal? So what…I'm sick.'
Sam tried to reign in the concern he felt that was edging more toward frustration and anger. Reading the look on his brother's face, he said, "Dude, you're an ass." Then he called for Bobby.
Bobby stood in the doorway of the cramped bathroom, not even attempting to fit a third person inside. He craned his neck over Sam's lanky body and got a good look at Dean. He just walked away, shaking his head. Sam was surprised, until Bobby reappeared with a stethoscope and a small canister of oxygen. At which point, Sam was even more surprised. He knew Bobby knew how to patch up quite the array of wounds and was a whiz at setting bones, but this was a little more in depth than he expected.
"When did you get medical training?"
"Friend of mine is a paramedic, taught me a couple things. Budge up, Sam." Bobby indicated he wanted Sam out of the way with a small nudge. In the cramped bathroom, it was like they were doing a tango, each trying to get around the other, until Sam was finally situated in the doorway and Bobby was kneeling down next to Dean.
The older hunter's callused fingers threaded an oxygen mask around Dean's face, securing it over his nose and mouth. Bobby put the stethoscope in his ears and slipped the other end under the younger hunter's shirt to get a listen. Dean took a sharp wheezing inhale, "That thing is cold, damnit!"
"Awww, so sorry I didn't warm it up for you, Princess. But you'll get a lollipop when I'm through. Now quiet down so I can hear." Bobby groused, which apparently was enough to get Dean to submit.
This whole thing was going rapidly out of control. Instead of being able to suck up being sick for a few days with no one the wiser, it had turned into a few weeks of misery and both Sam and Bobby worried and fussing over him. Dean's brain was curling up with the idea that maybe there was a lesson here about ignoring illness and being more open, but his brain was also sick and tired and oxygen-deprived, so it decided to not date the idea, to just be friends.
Bobby looked up at Sam and then directly at Dean, not mincing his words. "He needs to go to a hospital."
"No!" Dean said, regaining some of his vigor with oxygen being stuffed into him. "No friggin' way."
"Why, Bobby?" Sam asked, already knowing his brother was sick enough to warrant a trip to the ER, but wondering if there was something specific that made their friend come to that conclusion. And maybe Bobby saying it aloud would convince Dean.
Bobby removed the stethoscope from his ears with a sigh. "'Cause coughing up blood ain't exactly the sniffles. I don't think that's something a local clinic doctor is going to have a firm handle on. They're gonna want to send him to the hospital anyway. Might as well skip the middle man."
"No, but I already have the appointment, so I might as well go," Dean interjected, clearly ready to dig his heels in on the issue.
Sam looked between Bobby and his brother. Dean was looking better with the oxygen, already trying to get himself off of the floor. Compromise with a side of manipulation was the order of the day.
"Right, we have the doctor's appointment," Sam said, looking carefully at Bobby who looked damn ready to voice his objections, "And then whatever the doc says, whatever his advice is, we're going to follow it, right?"
Dean wasn't even listening at this point. "Yeah, sure, of course."
"So, if the doc tells you to go to the hospital, you’re going, no arguments."
Dean gazed his brother warily, not happy about the predicament he suddenly found himself in.
But Sam looked exhausted, worn thin, and just that was enough to get him to agree. "If he says that, and only if - I’ll go."
"Really?" Sam asked, unable to hold back the relief. He practically sagged against the wall.
"Well, you don't have to throw a parade or nothin'." Dean grumbled.
"Better haul out if we’re going to get there on time." Bobby frowned. "Never ask me to babysit your kids, Sam. They'll be spoiled rotten."
Part 7
Author: triquetralmoon
Rating: R
Genre: H/C (respiratory illness, PTSD)
Warnings: Swearing, violence, eventual flashbacks of graphic torture
Spoilers: Season 4, this is set in between Criss Angel Is a Douchebag and Death Takes a Holiday.
Summary: A soldier in the war to stop the apocalypse, Dean is running himself into the ground as he runs away from his time in Hell. What he pegs as a simple sickness soon becomes something much more deadly. The Winchesters can never catch a break. For some soldiers, the war is never over.
Chapter 1 / Chapter 2 / Chapter 3 / Chapter 4 / Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Cookie Crisp
It was an oldie, but a goodie. Alastair had somehow known, had always known, how to get inside someone's head to mix half-truths and personal history with torture. It was what made him so goddamn good at his job.
There had been a job in New Mexico, a solo-gig and Dean had made the critical mistake of not packing extra water for the Impala's radiator. The car overheated and Dean was stranded with a tiny pueblo hut for shelter - the one time he'd ever had to utilize the knowledge of converting piss to drinking water. He had a pretty undeniable case of heat stroke by the time someone had come along. Alastair took it - the orange haze, the smell of clay and the expectation of tumbleweeds, and had shoved him in an adobe oven. Trapped him, baked him like cookies.
He was back there now, and although he had memories of his knuckles banging on splintered pine, the rushing suffocation of grave dirt, his hands were still meeting with unyielding stone, his fingernails breaking off as they snagged uselessly on the rock. Eyes closed tightly shut, he remembered the pain of his eyeballs being exposed to the heat, of tear ducts drying out in moments, the horrible realization that any humidity you felt was from your own body's moisture - becoming like those goddamn awful banana chips his dad had always insisted on packing.
A sharp knock sounded, out of place for his current predicament. Adobe absorbed sound; this was a hollow rapping on thick metal. He was granted the mysterious knowledge that comes to you in a dream: it was a door, the dehydrated corpse of a man in fatigues on the other side.
The image woke Dean with a start, but it took him a moment before he allowed his eyelids to peel apart.
Not on fire - check.
The knocking continued, bringing him further out of the nightmare. His head spun dizzily as he sat up much too quickly. Sam wasn't there, his bed made already.
"Sam, you forget your key?" Dean's voice sounded like a violin being bowed with a saw blade, and he doubted that his brother had heard him.
The knock became more insistent and Dean groaned. "Keep it together, dude, you need to chill!" His exclamation was punctuated by the tortuous sneaker-in-a-washing-machine cough which had ended up waking him up a good portion of the night, keeping Sam up as well. He forced himself into a standing position, his stomach giving a belch of protest to remind him that his entire body was ready to rebel against whatever it was he wanted to do. Considering how he felt currently, it wasn't like he needed the reminder.
He was nearly at the door when Dean heard a voice, a voice which did not belong to his brother, informing Dean that he had about thirty seconds to open the door or it was going to be broken down. Dean got to the door and opened it just in time for Bobby to be using his shoulder as a battering ram, nearly getting Dean a good crack to the jaw. Instead, Bobby just ran into the room, not being able to stop his momentum until he was several feet inside. When the older man halted to a short stop and turned around, he gave a snort of derision.
"Damnit, Dean, you look like crap."
"Yeah, well, nice to see you too, sunshine."
"Where's Sam?"
Dean poked his head out into the chill autumn morning. It appeared the Indian Summer they had going for them had finally ceased altogether. "Car's not here. Gimme a sec." Dean went to go grab his cell off of the nightstand to call Sam, but there was a note that his phone was weighing down.
'Gone to get breakfast from the diner. Be right back. Call if you need anything. Leave this room and I will kick your ass.'
"He's at the diner, Bobby. It isn't far." Dean hugged an arm across his chest, bracing his ribs against the spikes of pain that arose on every inhale.
Bobby simply nodded, watching Dean carefully. "You want to tell me what's going on with you, son?"
Dean rolled his eyes, "C'mon, I'm just run down."
"Yeah, that's why you sound worse than some of my junkpiles. Go sit down."
Dean just stood there for a moment. "Junkpile…what?" It sounded familiar, déjà vu pulling at him until he remembered; Sam had said the same thing to him yesterday. "Huh, you two girls are spending entirely too much time together. No more slumber parties."
Not following the line of thought, Bobby quirked an eyebrow at Dean. "Just sit your ass down."
He shrugged and did as he was told, not because he felt some keen urge to obey, but he couldn't really think of a good reason to stay standing, his knees getting that slightly Gumby-feel right before they usually would buckle.
"Not that I don't appreciate the thought, you coming all this way, but…" Dean paused to catch his breath, ignoring the hairy eyeball his father figure was giving him. "Unless you're going to beat the germs out of me, I don't see what you're gonna be able to do."
"I got stuff in the car. Figured Sam'd help me haul it in."
"I could -"
"You can keep your backside on that bed, is what you can do." Bobby snapped sharply. Bobby only gave attitude, real attitude, when he thought Dean was messing up big time, making life-destroying mistakes. Dean remembered the conversation Sam had about Dean not caring enough to stick around. He also remembered the empty bottles strewn around Bobby's house when he first got out of Hell.
"…you know- " Dean was going to say something to Bobby about how he really did want to be on the planet, about how Bobby and Sam shouldn't worry so much, about how he wasn't quite so screwed in the head that he wanted to get personal with death yet another time, but then Sam walked back in, breakfast in hand.
Saved by Sasquatch.
Sam looked back and forth between his sickly brother and Bobby, sensing the awkward moment in the room. "Hey, Bobby, thanks for coming. You two playing nice?"
"We're just peachy." Dean said, a wide grin crossing his face. He was quite relieved to be bailed out of a moment that had the potential to become touchy-feely.
"Yeah…" Bobby said. "I was just telling our mutual idjit here that I had some stuff in the car."
"And I said -" Dean chimed in, but Sam immediately cut him off.
"Lemme guess! You told him that you'd help him bring it in, and he - having common sense - would have told you no. And the wheel turns on your cycle of denial and self-abuse…" Sam chuckled a little maniacally and turned to Bobby. "You see what I have to put up with?"
It didn't take Sherlock Holmes to figure out that while Sam was joking on the surface, he was rapidly getting to the point where he wasn't going to be able to reign in his frustration any longer.
"So, why don't we go get the stuff?" Bobby offered a retreat, gesturing toward the door.
Sam pulled out his cell and glanced at the clock. "Sure, yeah, we have time."
Both Bobby and Dean gazed at Sam in confusion.
"Time?" Bobby asked.
"We got a job?" Dean's face lit up with hope, at which Sam promptly rolled his eyes.
"No, not a job. You have a doctor's appointment."
Dean's jaw dropped. "You're serious?"
Before Dean could even put up a proper protest Sam immediately went into his short, well-rehearsed speech. "Don't even argue, man. You promised me last night you'd go, and you saying that was the only reason I didn't drag your ass to the ER last night. You can't take it back now. You're going."
Dean stared at Sam with a stony expression. "Where?"
"Local clinic." Sam turned his back on Dean's expression, concentrating intently on putting breakfast on the small dinette table. "You should eat something."
Dean ignored him. "When?"
"An hour. They are about twenty minutes away, though."
"So much for local." Dean grumbled. Twenty minutes wasn't far, but damnit - he wanted to grumble about something.
"It handles three towns, so…relatively." Sam replied, taking a slow sip of his coffee.
Dean turned and walked away from the two men, heading toward the bathroom. Sam noticed for the first time that Dean was holding himself the way he does when fuglies have beaten the crap out of his back, his shoulders slouched forward, the hand that wasn't bracing his ribs reaching back to touch the curve of his back every now and again.
"Where are you going? I don't think the bathroom windows are large enough to escape through." Sam tried to joke.
"I'm gonna go take a shower, or do I need an appointment for that too?" Dean didn't even turn around as he scooped up a handful of clean clothes - not that Sam and Bobby needed to see his face to get a feel for the annoyance etched on it.
"Good idea." Bobby grinned wryly. "Ya wouldn't want the doc to think that the stink is a symptom."
Dean snorted and shut the bathroom door behind him.
Sam and Bobby headed out to the motel parking lot where the older hunter's truck was waiting. In the back there were two very large red toolboxes and a couple of thick medical texts.
"All this?" Sam asked.
"Yep." Bobby grunted, hefting one of the toolboxes over the side of the flatbed and putting it in Sam's waiting hands. "Though, I'm not sure how much good it'll do him."
"What? Why not?" Sam's brow immediately furrowed.
"That cough of his is deeper than just some chest cold. We really need to know what we're dealing with -and only an x-ray, labs, and trained ears can do that, or else I'm just tossing pills in the dark here. Plus, you said he's been hiding it - so whatever is going on with him has probably sunk its teeth in pretty good."
Sam flinched inwardly. He knew Bobby wasn't implying anything, but the thought still came that if he had been more on top of the situation, things might not have gotten this bad.
Bobby saw the downtrodden look of self-loathing Sam's entire posture was suddenly screaming.
"Ain't the first time he's done this, Sam. Won't be the last."
"We're still going to do everything we can." Sam declared firmly.
"'Course we are. That's not even a question."
Sam did not like the sound of this conversation at all. It reminded him of the many conversations that occurred before Dean went to Hell: that everything was going to be fine, that they were going to do everything in their power to stop it… And, granted, having demonic dogs on your ass is a tad more ominous than getting sick, but Sam felt entitled to worry. The memory of gently placing his brother's cold body in a hand-built coffin was still fresh in his mind.
Bobby hefted the other toolbox over the side and the two men headed back into the motel room. They immediately stopped short, hearing Dean's rib-breaking hack bouncing off of the walls, the tile in the bathroom only serving to make it echo louder. Bobby busied himself looking through the many small compartments of the toolboxes while Sam perched on the end of Dean's bed, both of them waiting for the painful choking to stop. Minutes later, it finally happened. There was a break in the ragged coughs and barely audible behind the closed door was wheezing lacing every irregular breath.
"Dude, you alright?" Sam called.
There was no response.
Sam threw Bobby a look and stood up, heading over to the bathroom door.
"If you don't answer, I'm gonna come in."
Again, the only response was the staggered wheezing.
"Alright, man, if you're naked - cover up." Sam gave a warning knock on the door as he slowly pushed it open. He found his brother sitting on the floor, mostly dressed after having showered - his new clothes damp from the mix of feverish sweat and shower steam. A wad of toilet paper made disgusting by bloody phlegm was clutched tightly in his hand. His back was leaning against the tub, his purplish lips standing out against his pallid complexion. Dean gazed up at the gigantic form looming over him blearily, the crooked smile sending a message, 'What do ya want a freakin' medal? So what…I'm sick.'
Sam tried to reign in the concern he felt that was edging more toward frustration and anger. Reading the look on his brother's face, he said, "Dude, you're an ass." Then he called for Bobby.
Bobby stood in the doorway of the cramped bathroom, not even attempting to fit a third person inside. He craned his neck over Sam's lanky body and got a good look at Dean. He just walked away, shaking his head. Sam was surprised, until Bobby reappeared with a stethoscope and a small canister of oxygen. At which point, Sam was even more surprised. He knew Bobby knew how to patch up quite the array of wounds and was a whiz at setting bones, but this was a little more in depth than he expected.
"When did you get medical training?"
"Friend of mine is a paramedic, taught me a couple things. Budge up, Sam." Bobby indicated he wanted Sam out of the way with a small nudge. In the cramped bathroom, it was like they were doing a tango, each trying to get around the other, until Sam was finally situated in the doorway and Bobby was kneeling down next to Dean.
The older hunter's callused fingers threaded an oxygen mask around Dean's face, securing it over his nose and mouth. Bobby put the stethoscope in his ears and slipped the other end under the younger hunter's shirt to get a listen. Dean took a sharp wheezing inhale, "That thing is cold, damnit!"
"Awww, so sorry I didn't warm it up for you, Princess. But you'll get a lollipop when I'm through. Now quiet down so I can hear." Bobby groused, which apparently was enough to get Dean to submit.
This whole thing was going rapidly out of control. Instead of being able to suck up being sick for a few days with no one the wiser, it had turned into a few weeks of misery and both Sam and Bobby worried and fussing over him. Dean's brain was curling up with the idea that maybe there was a lesson here about ignoring illness and being more open, but his brain was also sick and tired and oxygen-deprived, so it decided to not date the idea, to just be friends.
Bobby looked up at Sam and then directly at Dean, not mincing his words. "He needs to go to a hospital."
"No!" Dean said, regaining some of his vigor with oxygen being stuffed into him. "No friggin' way."
"Why, Bobby?" Sam asked, already knowing his brother was sick enough to warrant a trip to the ER, but wondering if there was something specific that made their friend come to that conclusion. And maybe Bobby saying it aloud would convince Dean.
Bobby removed the stethoscope from his ears with a sigh. "'Cause coughing up blood ain't exactly the sniffles. I don't think that's something a local clinic doctor is going to have a firm handle on. They're gonna want to send him to the hospital anyway. Might as well skip the middle man."
"No, but I already have the appointment, so I might as well go," Dean interjected, clearly ready to dig his heels in on the issue.
Sam looked between Bobby and his brother. Dean was looking better with the oxygen, already trying to get himself off of the floor. Compromise with a side of manipulation was the order of the day.
"Right, we have the doctor's appointment," Sam said, looking carefully at Bobby who looked damn ready to voice his objections, "And then whatever the doc says, whatever his advice is, we're going to follow it, right?"
Dean wasn't even listening at this point. "Yeah, sure, of course."
"So, if the doc tells you to go to the hospital, you’re going, no arguments."
Dean gazed his brother warily, not happy about the predicament he suddenly found himself in.
But Sam looked exhausted, worn thin, and just that was enough to get him to agree. "If he says that, and only if - I’ll go."
"Really?" Sam asked, unable to hold back the relief. He practically sagged against the wall.
"Well, you don't have to throw a parade or nothin'." Dean grumbled.
"Better haul out if we’re going to get there on time." Bobby frowned. "Never ask me to babysit your kids, Sam. They'll be spoiled rotten."
Part 7